Around the world and through history, VIRTUE//VICE lists are a staple of ethics and religion, behavior and belief. The current “On Faith” questions involve a VICE list: “In Christian theology, there are Seven Deadly Sins: pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth. Which of these do you think is the worst? Which is most prevalent and harmful in our society today?”
GREED is my choice. It’s both the worst and, in our society today, the most prevalent and harmful. But before supporting my choice, I must make two adjustments:
..........The Seven Deadly Sins are broadly “in Christian theology,” but specifically they are a vice catalog within Roman Catholic ethics. In the English language, they are not known to have appeared together until 1711. Further, virtue/vice catalogs precede Christianity in classical (Greek and Roman) and Jewish literature.
..........Generally, Christian ethics treats first of virtues, only thereafter of vices. Traditionally, the virtues are seven: four classical (prudence, justice, courage, temperance), three specifically Christian (faith, hope, love).
In the Christian paradigm, life in all its aspects is to be seen as providential, as divinely given. Early Christianity described Christian character by lists of virtues-values so conceived. In Galatians 5:22, the virtues are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” In Ephesians 5:9, the values are “all that is good and right and true.” In Philippians 4:8, Christians are to “think about these things”: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable...any excellence...anything worthy of praise.”
Back to GREED.
1.....Greed is CENTRIPETAL, sucking everything into itself. Its energies are consumed in “seeking its own” (First Corinthians 13:5), conceiving as its own whatever it desires regardless of any other considerations: its responsibility is only to itself. The sun is so greedy that were it not for rotation, everything else in the solar system would collapse into it.
The greedy soul (or family or society, institution or partnership, corporation or nation) exercises a gravitational pull on all it desires—beyond its needs and without consideration of others’ needs. It is its own sun, its own god.
While it is possible to subsume six of the deadly sins under any one of them, I think greed wins this contest.
2.....The best antonym of greed is whatever word best suggests the virtue of sucking everything out of itself in the interest of others—the word with the greatest CENTRIFUGAL force. In early Christian Greek (the language of the New Testament), that word is “agathosune,” which is translated above (in the first list of the Christian character) as “GENEROSITY.” Some other words bespeak goodness; but this word (an intensive of "agathos," good) signals a goodness eager and energetic to meet human needs no matter the cost to the doer of the good. In Christianity, Jesus is more than the model for such goodness; in paying the cost of the Cross, he opened for all the gates of new life beyond sin.
I’ll close with the story of someone who right now, in this world of appalling greed-caused misery, exhibits the eager and energetic generosity my title refers to, a generosity which shames greed. I think of some living Christian examples, but I have decided on a Muslim. (In teaching such generosity, Jesus a Jew told the parable not of a good Jew but of “The Good Samaritan.”)
Muhammad Yunus, an economist with a Vanderbilt University PhD, deserved the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank for “micro-credit” to the poor as a tool in poverty reduction, and for the development of “social business,” a form of capitalism attentive equally to profit and to social-change benefits. Here is even more than intelligent compassion. Here is competent generosity in action toward a better world. Such generosity shames greed.
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